new growth

the asparagus spear in the top photo topping out at nearly twenty-one inches is the same spear that is in the first photo of the june twentieth post...something on the order of seventeen inches of growth in three days...asparagus is even scarier that maize in the way it seems to jump up from nowhwere...two plants have sprouted more spears since the last post so there are seventeen of them up from seven plants...conditions must be acceptable and hopefully this bodes well for next year when we start harvesting...the gamagrass is sprouting a new seed head...i surmise that the first one has broken off due to the wind ( the seeds that are left at the bottom are too green for the head to be anywhere near ready to shatter) and that there are seeds lurking in the university lawn...since i have had a success rate of only about ten percent as far as germinating gamagrass goes i don't think there's alot to worry over in terms of invasive behavior...gamagrass seems to be a reluctant pest at best...the bottom photo is the garden as it looked just before i left campus this morning...i went out to photograph corn rows in the filds along county line road to continue the discussion of industrial agriculture and erosion but a combination of rows planted parallel to the road and traffic hampered my ability to capy=ture anything i am willing to post as an illustration...perhaps after a bit i will try to locate a more receptive field of dense yellow number two to demonstrate my point about the abundance of bare soil that maize farming in the early twenty-first century exposes...i did get a photo of someone disking with a mccormick farmall...i'll post that later for sure...the apple trees i planted out back shocked so badly that i thought they were goners but they have recovered after a few days and are exhibiting new growth...i am relieved and will post a series of photos about that as soon as i can.